French History - Advance Access

It's So French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture

Rockett, S. — 2008-07-16

Sketches of the Nineteenth Century: European Journalism and its Physiologies, 1830-50

Rhoden, W. J. — 2008-07-16

Le role meconnu de la loi salique. La succession royale XIV e-XVI e siecles

Daly, K. — 2008-07-16

Liens personnels, reseaux, solidarites en France et dans les iles Britanniques (XIe -XXe siecle)

Beam, A. — 2008-07-16

Combats pour une Bretagne catholique et rurale. Les droites bretonnes dans l'entre-deux guerres

Passmore, K. — 2008-07-16

Selbstmord or Euthanasia? Who killed the Ligue des droits de l'homme?

Ingram, N. — 2008-07-16

The Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH) carried enormous moral authority in the political culture of the Third Republic; its importance to French political history in the period of the two world wars can hardly be overemphasized. Strangely, though, until very recently, it has suffered from an almost total neglect from French historians. The cloud of oubli has begun to lift. In its place, however, a new orthodoxy seems set to establish itself, one which sees the Ligue as the incarnation of Republican Virtue, and the hapless victim in 1940 of Nazi oppression. This article is based on the archives of the Ligue which were returned to France from the former Soviet Union in 2001, together with the records of Gestapo interrogations of Ligue members after the fall of France, and other German archival records in Berlin. It argues for a more nuanced, less hagiographical appreciation of the Ligue and suggests on the contrary that it was not the Nazis or the war experience which killed the Ligue, but rather that the LDH was dead or dying long before the Nazi invasion of 1940.

Une Flandre a la francaise: l'identite regionale a l'epreuve du modele republicain

Storm, E. — 2008-07-11

Le Cri du Peuple (22 fevrier-23 mai 1871)

Tombs, R. — 2008-07-11

Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory

Tyre, S. — 2008-07-11

THE BRIC-A-BRAC OF THE OLD REGIME: COLLECTING AND CULTURAL HISTORY IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

Stammers, T. — 2008-07-11

The French Revolution unleashed an earthquake not just in the world of governance and ideas but also in the world of things. It generated profound changes in both political and material culture. This paper discusses some of the legacies of the Revolution for the distribution and exhibition of historical artefacts, and also for how nineteenth-century historians approached and interpreted their sources. For in their iconoclastic fury, the revolutionaries undoubtedly gave an unanticipated boost to amateur historians, urban antiquarians and practitioners of cultural history. Exploring the close connections between the collector's passion and the historian's craft in the middle of the nineteenth century, the paper traces how the acquisition and scrutiny of objects displaced or produced by the French Revolution encouraged new forms of historical writing, and new possibilities for the historical imagination.

A 'THEATRE OF RULE'? DOMESTIC SERVICE IN ARISTOCRATIC HOUSEHOLDS UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC

Macknight, E. C. — 2008-07-07

E. P. Thompson developed the notion of ‘cultural hegemony’ to analyse the power of the ruling class over the working class in eighteenth-century England. This article examines the aristocracy's endeavour to maintain its cultural hegemony in the France of the Third Republic. Drawing on the private archives of noble families, it documents servants’ roles in supporting the ‘conspicuous consumption’ of their employers, the hierarchy and wages of male and female servants and the language and gestures used in employer–servant interaction. It then looks at working-class responses to nobles’ hegemonic ritual of hunting and concludes with discussion of the post-war socio-economic climate in which the distinctive features of domestic service in aristocratic households were gradually abandoned.

THE CONVERSION OF INFIDELS AND HERETICS: BAPTISM AND CONFESSIONAL ALLEGIANCE IN NANTES DURING THE EARLY WARS OF RELIGION, 1550-1570

Tingle, E. C. — 2008-06-26

On 15 August 1553 in Nantes, two Muslim boys were baptized as Catholics sponsored by members of the city's Spanish community. Less than a decade later, the early 1560s saw the rebaptism as Catholics of several Protestant children in the city. These examples, together with a number of published sermons and disputations concerning baptism written in the city in these years, show that for the period between 1550 and 1570, this sacrament became an important focus for the manifestation of confessional identity in Nantes. The growth of Protestantism after 1550 brought with it an increased interest in baptism, which became part of a wider conflict over the meaning and practice of religious ritual between Protestants and Catholics. While the eucharist was vitally important in reinforcing religious identity in this period, it was not the only holy weapon in the Catholic ritual armoury. In the early decades of religious conflict, between 1550 and 1570, baptism also played an important role in defining confessional identity.